


Haita the Shepherd Remix

by closetcellist



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 13:10:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6986425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/closetcellist/pseuds/closetcellist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A remix of the short story "Haita the Shepherd"--A different way it might have been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haita the Shepherd Remix

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Haita The Shepherd](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/200611) by Ambrose Bierce. 



In the mind of Haita the naivety of youth had not yet been, nor in his isolation ever would be, supplanted by the clear-sightedness of varied experience.  His thoughts were simple, as was his life, and his soul devoid of ambition and dedicated to the gods and spirits he had been raised to serve.  He rose with the sun and made daily devotions to Hastur, the masked god-power whose will he felt imbued the valley in which he spent his days. His piety was great, and he daily traced the blood of his sacrifices along the sigil carved in the stone of his altar. These rituals performed, he performed his daily tasks, driving his flock afield, eating his morning meal of curds and oat cake, eating of the berries the gentle whispers in his mind nudged him toward, and drinking of the cool water of the valley’s stream.

During the long summer day, as his sheep cropped the grass which had been Hastur’s gift to bestow upon them, or as they lay with their forelegs doubled under their breasts to chew their cud, Haita reclined in the inky, reaching shadow of the trees, and played music which sounded sweet to the ears of the demoniac figures that lurked in the woods.  Seeing them only from the corner of his eye, and having no contact with any save the old warlock who lived beyond the blue hills, whose ancient frame was twisted and wracked by the price he paid for his power and contracts with the Others, Haita found them beautiful, and their mad gibbering sounded to him as the laughter of children.  At times, he tried to look at them directly, but they vanished from his sight, unwilling to chance revealing their true nature to this uncorrupted soul dedicated to their awful master, and risk losing him and incurring the displeasure of their King.  Haita understood their vanishing as a parable, that happiness may come if not sought, but if looked for will never be seen. Used as he was to the visible absence of Hastur, his god, the acceptance of the abstract and unknowable came more naturally to him, than one who lived entrenched in the world of men and reason.

So passed his life, one day like another, save when storms battered the valley, giving vent to the wrath of a frustrated god.  Haita cowered and prayed, offering himself as a sacrifice that the unknowing men of the cities beyond the blue hills might be spared the punishment of a god they knew not of.  Haita’s dreams on these rain-lashed nights were dark and twisted, filled with sinister whisperings and the smell of the sea that Haita himself had never seen.  Any watching his sleeping form would feel overcome by pity, watching the terror play across his simple face. But there were none to watch, and on waking Haita remembered them naught.

So he had lived, since he could remember—any other mode of existence was inconceivable to him.  The warlock, who dwelt at the head of the valley, told him tales of the cities beyond, where people lived lives devoid of sheep (poor souls!); their lives were beyond the reach of his limited experience and could not touch him.  Of his childhood he had no memory, and no knowledge of the years the warlock had spent training him in the worship of Hastur, to keep back the power of that evil god from whom he derived his dark gifts and to whom he did not wish to find himself beholden.

Though Haita was simple and isolated, he came to understand the cycles of life from the animals he tended. The end of their lives, the change to silence, stillness, and decay, spoke to the whispers of the dreams he could not remember and came to worry him in the daylight hours.  He began to wish for knowledge of his birth and his beginning, thinking that would help him understand the ill-defined yet unstoppable end awaiting him.  These musing cast a pall over his thoughts and mood.  The whispers of the storm-wracked nights attended him on every breeze, and the melody of his pipe ceased to amuse even the malignant beings of the forest.  Deprived of their entertainment, they enacted minor destructions of the woods, and Haita would occasionally find the mutilated corpse of a hare or unlucky sparrow near the edge of the woods where he listlessly rested.

His questions brought him no happiness, and his devotions to Hastur grew scattered  and infrequent.  The warlock felt this change, as the barrier between Hastur’s hungry wrath and his own mind began to weaken.  To save himself from paying his dues, the warlock crafted a distraction.

As Haita sat, letting his sheep run where they would, a great brightness fell over him, emanating from the figure that stood before him. It was a woman, beautiful to the eyes of one who had seen no other forms but the half-glimpsed imps and the twisted wreck of a man that was the warlock.  Her insubstantiality did not bother him, and the sardonic twist of her smile went unnoticed. Before her feet, flowers wilted and died, and birds, winged agents of a different master than hers, swarmed about her, their sharp bills trained on her eyes. Yet her brightness protected her, blinding her attackers and driving them off disoriented, washing away the natural shadows of the ground and turning all before her into a barren and ghostly waste. Haita was enchanted, and knelt before her as if to worship.

The maiden, if such she could be called, smiled mockingly and blindingly upon the youth, saying “come, thou art not to worship me, who am no goddess. But if thou question me not, I shall abide with thee for e’er and all.”

Yet Haita could not still his curiosity, nor his willful tongue, and spoke.  “I pray thee, lovely maid, tell me thy name and whence and why thou comest.”

The maiden rolled her shining eyes and said none too sadly, “Presumptuous and ungrateful youth! Must I then so soon leave thee?” Though Haita protested, unsure of his offense, nothing could come of it but that the maiden fled, disappearing as suddenly as she had appeared at first, her unnatural light receding from the land which looked once more vital and alive. But Haita had eyes and mind only for the Maiden, as he termed her in his head, and spent the remaining sunlight hours in search of her.

His wanderings kept him from his duties until night, when the howling of wolves startled his sheep into terrified bleatings. Forgetting his search for the shining maid, he hurried his flock home, and that night attended once more his devotions to Hastur, his jealous and dark god.

The next morn, he saw the Maiden again, standing by the mouth of the cave in which he slept.  “Because thou didst thy duty by the flock, and didst not forget to thank Hastur for staying the wolves of the night, I am come to thee again,” she explained, the boredom laced through her voice missing its mark in simple Haita’s mind.  “Wilt thou have me for a companion?”  
  
“Who would not have thee for ever?” he asked. “But oh, that thou wert of my own sex, that we might wrestle and run races and so never tire of being together.” For Haita knew not what a man and woman might be together, only that the Maiden was pleasing to his eye, unused as it was to human forms, and spoke, as he heard it, pleasantly to him.

Yet this produced only a put-upon sigh, and the Maiden simply walked away. Though Haita tried to chase her and detain her, on exiting the cave he observed the sudden and torrential rains that swelled the river, moving it to overflow its banks. He forgot once more the Maiden and throwing himself on his knees in supplication, prayed again and fervently to Hastur to spare the unknowing dwellers in the cities beyond the hills.

It was many days before he saw the Maiden again, on his return from visiting the warlock, who had grown sick with the use of so much magic to create the woman-shaped being. The warlock knew he might only summon her once more and hope that he could teach Haita the lesson he intended.

The Maiden appeared in Haita’s path, in garments that flashed like the sun off a blade.  Once more he spoke to him, saying, “I am come again to dwell with thee if thou wilt now have me, for none else will. Thou mayest have learned wisdom, and art willing to take me as I am, nor care to know.”

Haita, overcome once more by her presence, threw himself at her feet crying, “Beautiful being, if thou wilt but deign to accept all the devotion of my heart and soul—after Hastur be served—it is thine for ever. But, alas! thou art capricious and wayward. Before to-morrow's sun I may lose thee again. Promise, I beseech thee, that however in my ignorance I may offend, thou wilt forgive and remain always with me.”


End file.
